Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.
One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work.
What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials.
High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.
To say that being non-judgmental is better than being judgmental is itself a judgment, and therefore a violation of principle.
Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.
As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price control.
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?
It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.
Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.
Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexityof the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.
Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.
The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration.
Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.
If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.
Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.
Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.
You may have the right to live anyway you like, but you don't have a right to have other people like it. Respect it or pay for it.
In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.
All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
The whole idea of equal justice under law is completely incompatible with the idea of judges deciding cases according to "empathy".
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.
One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy.
If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.
The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.
How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?
Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.
Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.
Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that.
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.
One undeniable accomplishment of Bill Clinton's presidency was that it kept Jimmy Carter from being the worst U.S. president in history.
A friend from India told me that a countryman of his said: "I want to go to America. I want to see a country where poor people are fat."
The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.
If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?
Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible.
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?
The curse of the intelligentsia is their ability to rationalize and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced to face reality.
Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.
Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.